ODNI Mass Purges Deep Staters, Obama and Biden Holdovers, and 90-Year-Old Geezers Who Were Still Collecting Government Checks
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) went on a firing spree yesterday, terminating nearly half its staff, including 61 employees over 80 years old who had never retired and were still collecting checks despite not having set foot in an office or done any work since 2013.
When Donald J. Trump retook the Oval Office in January, he ordered Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who oversees 18 alphabet agencies, to weed out Obama and Biden-era holdovers who had entrenched themselves in the government. Exposing Deep Staters has been a painstaking task that involved repeatedly polygraphing and interviewing thousands of personnel. The ODNI’s colossal effort, though, culminated in yesterday’s purge; scores of disloyal workers were escorted by security from 37 federal buildings across the country.
Not all potential traitors, however, were in their offices when Tulsi Gabbard began issuing termination notices. The ODNI’s investigation revealed that 61 employees long past mandatory retirement age hadn’t retired and were still collecting paychecks even though they hadn’t shown up for work for, in some cases, 20 years.
Take, for example, ancient Johnaton Lee, who joined the ODNI after earning a Ph.D. in criminology from Hofstra University in 2008. A late bloomer, Lee was 47 when he finished school and got the job, and spent the entirety of his career at the ODNI’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia. In 2015, Lee fell ill and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic, debilitating, incurable disease. The ODNI director at the time, James Clapper, whose arrest RRN reported yesterday, offered Lee early retirement and full pension benefits, but Lee refused and insisted he could still perform his duties. Clapper applauded Lee’s resolve, even after Lee was confined to a wheelchair, lost his ability to speak coherently, and began working remotely from home.
It’s natural to sympathize with Lee’s plight; he was stricken with a sickness most people wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy. But immobility hadn’t stopped him from espousing disgust at anyone opposing Obama. Lee, with his limited speech, had told Clapper that Obama ought to suspend the 2016 presidential election so he could remain in power.
It’s unclear and impossible to fathom how Lee stayed employed from 2017 to 2021, by which time he had clearly shown his true colors and was bedridden. Yet he still received direct deposits, $14,175/month as a GS-15 federal employee.
Those payouts continued throughout Biden’s illegal presidency and stopped only yesterday when ODNI personnel showed up at Lee’s home and handed his nurse a notice of immediate dismissal.
Another example is 86-year-old Fredrick Raymond Oaks, who until yesterday had been with the ODNI since 2009. Oakes is a computer programmer and a graduate of the California Institute of Technology. After graduating, he worked exclusively for the government, first as a CIA analyst (2005-2007), then as a “target package” designator for the Air Force—he helped program RQ-1 Predator drones. In March 2009, he joined the ODNI and took part in compiling Obama’s “enemies list,” an encyclopedic catalogue of patriots critical of Hussein’s autocratic rule over the country. Like Lee, he had slipped through the cracks and avoided termination until Trump’s current government began a deep dive into employee files. Oaks, who has smoked four packs of cigarettes a day for the last 60 years and now survives only on supplemental oxygen, was canned along with many government geezers who long survived their expiry dates.
An ODNI source familiar with the firings told Real Raw News, “It’s really unimaginable, but we had dozens and dozens of folks in their 80s and even 90s still getting paid, and even while getting social security checks. If this is going on here, I’d bet it’s happening all over the government. We’ve kicked out 60, but, man, I bet more are out there.”
